


Facade

by Zenosyke



Category: Persona Series, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Character Growth, Character Study, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 10:07:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19990360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zenosyke/pseuds/Zenosyke
Summary: The only stipulations to the contract were that you must choose your fate of your own free will and accept the consequences of your actions. That was all he had to do to be a hero.He signed without a second thought and the world gained a hero who would leave behind a legend to rival the ancient epics.





	Facade

"Welcome... to the Velvet Room."

Izuku's eyes darted around the new scenery, not fully comprehending what he was seeing. Instead of the blasted inferno of a city street he had been charging in to in an effort to save Kacchan, he found himself in an ornate theater. A massive room decorated in shades of blue and pristine in a way that suggested the opening night of a play. Dominating the space, if not in size then presence, was a stage, its azure curtains still drawn together. 

On the left side of the stage stood a woman, swept back pale blue hair with white streaks, fair skin and adorned in a dress the color of midnight, singing a haunting aria. Just beside her a man with tightly combed navy hair, with a suit and blindfold to match, played the piano in accompaniment. 

Opposite to the musical duo, an old man with a long nose, pointed ears and bulging, bloodshot eyes sat in a massive cobalt reading chair, his ink black suit immaculate despite his slightly curled posture.

"This place exists between dream and reality, mind and matter. I would suggest you take a seat. We have much to discuss and precious little time." The old man spoke, waving his hand towards a seat front row center. Rather, it would have been, had the theater had other seats, noticed now by their absence as Izuku almost mechanically took the suggested seat.

Bulging eyes focused on the confused teen, "I'm sure you have many questions, so let us start with introductions. My name is Igor, and I am here to make you an offer."

"I... don't think I understand. An offer? I don't even know where this is, I mean I know you called it the Velvet Room, but is this part of your quirk? Is this some kind of pocket dimension or something? I've not heard of any heroes or villains with that kind of ability so are you some kind of vigilante?" The greenette spun his mental wheels a bit longer, asking more tangential and inane questions before Igor, after having allowed himself a moment of amusement, eventually spoke up. 

"As I said young man, we have only limited time at the moment. As I recall, you were rather busy before you arrived and my intent is to help you with that."

"Oh, crap, Kacchan!" From muttering to panic, Izuku made to get up from his seat before stopping, "Wait, you can help me save Kacchan? Is that the offer you were talking about?"

Igor stood from his reading chair revealing himself to be much taller than initial impressions and began to descend the stairs next to the stage to approach the teen as he spoke, "Indeed, I can and it was. The denizens of this room are sworn to help those who enter it, as long as those select few abide by a contract. The only stipulations are that you must choose your fate of your own free will and accept the consequences of your actions."

The balding old man now stood in front of Izuku, hands behind his back. With a flourish, the master of the Velvet Room held a tome the color of the sky forward to the boy that would be his charge. "Know this, whether you accept our help or not Izuku Midoriya, Katsuki Bakugo will be safe. That being said, the world stands on the precipice of change, the balance between Law and Chaos precariously set on a razor's edge. You have the potential to tip that struggle in whichever direction you may desire. The coming years will be the beginnings of the new heroic epics told for ages, yet they still lack an author." 

Igor flicked a thumb and opened the tome he held to the first page, "XXI by _____" the sole print.

Izuku stared at the book, mind racing. "I'm nobody. Why me and not someone with a quirk? A pro hero like All Might?"

Igor's omnipresent grin stretched until it seemed to split his face, "You, young man, are like the number Zero. Empty, but full of possibilities. You are simply the best choice to guide and help grow to your full potential."

"If I agree... Can I be a hero?" Izuku tried to keep the hope from making his voice quiver.

"If that is your choice and you embrace it, you will be the greatest."

Igor's too large grin, rather than being unnerving, was strangely calming, "...How do I sign?"

\---

"Kid, what the hell are you doing? You're gonna get yourself killed!" Izuku stumbled a bit as he heard Death Arms behind him yell a warning. None of the Pros had moved since he jumped the barrier, so the only thing left to do was return to his sprint. 

He wasn't sure if that blue room was a hallucination or not, but that hardly changed the fact that his friend needed help.

Taking off his backpack mid run and doing his best to estimate the throw, Izuku hurled the weighty bag of books at the only part of the slime villain covering Katsuki that seemed solid, the eyes.

A scream of "This fucking brat again?" marked the direct hit, and caused enough squirming in the sentient mass of sewage to allow its hostage a brief gasp of air before the villain regained his composure. "I'm going to kill you properly this time!"

Izuku watched as the villain lashed out with a tentacle, calmly observing that it looked like it had enough force to take his head off cleanly. He briefly lamented that he hadn't even gotten within 6 feet of the villain, to say nothing of attempting to save Kacchan. He at least hoped that his death would motivate-

'Thou art I, and I am thou...'

He smiled. He felt like it was a familiar smile.

"Per..."

Everything was going to be okay after all.

"So..."

Help had arrived.

"Na!"

He was here!

\---

Hedoro Waru gurgled in satisfaction. In just a minute of two more he could get out of here free and clear. It would be quicker, but his meat sack of the day was putting up a surprising fight for being a young teen. 'With a quirk that caused explosions this powerful,' he thought, 'this kid was going to grow up and be an amazing hero or a nightmarish crime boss. Really, I'm doing everyone a favor by getting rid of him now.'

He shifted his gelatinous body slightly as he felt another explosion well up from his hostage and redirected the blast in to a near by food stand.

He was almost done drowning the blond brat inside of him when he felt something slam in to one of his eyes. 'That little green shit that got me splattered earlier!' He howled in inarticulate rage and decided to make sure the broccoli looking brat never got in his way again. He relished the look of the stupid kid, head bowed, muttering his last words before he shuffled loose the mortal coil.

"Persona!"

It was at this moment that Hedoro Waru realized that, at some point recently, he had made a terrible mistake. 

A figure, knightly and regal in appearance and bearing, floated in front of the brat. Clad in beautiful silver plate from head to toe, almost comically large triangular shield on its left arm with an obvious sword hilt coming out of it, and covered in swirling blue power.

"Thou art I and I am thou. From the Sea of thy Soul I cometh. I am Galahad, the Seeker!" came the tinny, echoing voice from within the armored figure.

Without a moment's hesitation, the child threw his hand forward and announced his guardian's name almost as a command. The larger than life armored figure shot through the air, disregarding the call of gravity as it drew its lengthy broadsword from the shield. The ethereal knight cleaved the tendril approaching its wielder from the sky, batting away subsequent attacks with ease before stopping scant feet from the slime villain.

"Tempest Slash!" and then the slime villain knew pain. The blow from All Might had been swift and brutal but it had been just one blow. Waru felt as his body was ripped away from his hostage with unerring precision from a multitude of cuts delivered in the span of a second. As the finishing blow was about to come, though, the Knight disappeared and the kid fell like a puppet with no strings. 

Thoroughly splattered, the villain only hoped that he could squirm away before being collected again. Fuck All Might, fuck the explosive brat, fuck the broccoli kid, he was done with this town. Abandoning the majority of his body, Hedoro gathered his most necessary bits, all located mercifully near by, while the stunned heroes and crowd attempted to piece together exactly what the hell had just happened. Taking no chances he slithered into a nearby drain and disappeared. 

\---

It had been a few hours now, he thought. He wasn't sure. His phone had been ruined and a watch could never survive his wrist. All of the press had left after praising his bravery, the pros had left after trying to get him as a sidekick and now he sat alone. Possibly not the brightest thing considering his recent harrowing ordeal, but that was almost assuredly the farthest thing from his mind at the moment.

'Deku saved me.' 

That singular sentence had been rattling in his head almost exclusively this entire time. He hadn't gotten himself out of the situation, none of the pros had helped, it had been fucking Deku and that weird ghost armor of his. It may have caused him to pass out and get carted off to the hospital, but that hardly changed the fact of the matter.

That had been another bit of hard to swallow information he had been spending his time trying to parse. Deku had no quirk, or at least he shouldn't. Clearly that was wrong, though, because he had been saved by something that clearly took commands from and was powered by that nerd.

So, Deku wasn't powerless. Had he been lied to for the past decade? Unless the greenette was the best actor of this or any generation, that was impossible. No way could that shitty nerd hide anything that long.

So, this was a new development. Why here and now became the question. Late bloomers weren't exactly unheard of, but they were exceedingly rare. Frequently the cause of and solution to late quirk development was extreme stress. Traumatic experiences caused the person to withdraw and suppress themselves and subsequently their powers until a point later in life when those powers roared back to life in response to the wielders need, often harming the threat and the late bloomer alike in the event.

That didn't quite add up, though. Nothing in particular had happened to Deku to cause that kind of withdrawal that he could think of, unless telling him to fuck off all those years ago had really done a number on him. He got quieter, sure, but the idiot clearly didn't know when to give up if that notebook he had burned earlier had been an indication. Not only that, but Deku had seemed pretty in control when his ghost thing had shown up. A bit panicky to be sure, but that was nothing new.

So, the nerd had a power that was new, and didn't match what he had heard about people who had quirks and didn't know it. Precisely what the fuck was going on, then.

Whatever it was, it meant a severe change in what he had believed the power dynamics around him to be. Suddenly there was someone very close by that stood to rival him, a very real threat to his primacy. He was no longer the God-king of his school, towering above all of the peasants with only a meager claim to power. He now owed a debt, one he was unsure how to pay if he was even willing. 

A burble of childhood memory snuck up on him, reminding him of when he had thought he might have company at the top of heroics but it was squashed and discarded as irrelevant as he continued to mull over the days events.

It was there, in a random alley, swimming in his own thoughts and unanswered questions that Mitsuki Bakugo found finally found her son. With uncharacteristic silence from the both, the worried mother collected her son and brought him home. She could give him an earful the next day.

\---

Elsewhere in town, another individual was similarly steeped in his own thoughts. All Might, the Symbol of Peace and Justice, had been almost completely worthless today. That slime villain had endangered dozens of people that day and had escaped three times under his watch. So he sat on his bed, not as All Might but as Yagi Toshinori, and ruminated.

That green haired kid, Midoriya if he remembered the police correctly, seemed to be everywhere Yagi himself had needed to be today.

The first time the young man had crossed his path had been in the inauspicious circumstance of being drowned inside someone. An absurd notion before quirks, now just bizarre and in the case of Midoriya unfortunate facet of existence. The rescue had been textbook and meeting fans, even the more enthusiastic ones like Midoriya, was nice.

Things went spiraling out of his control from there. The kid grabbing his leg as he left, seeing his weakened state, and feeding him what now seemed like a sob story for attention about not having a quirk, and Yagi seeming to genuinely crush his dreams.

He didn't know what to make of that encounter now. The kid showed pretty clearly during his second run in with the slime villain that he had power. Not using during their first meeting could be chalked up to either being surprised by the villain or worry about the toll it would have on his body but why bother to hide it in the first place? 

Why would he claim he had no power? Why would he ask if he could be a hero with no power and then look so crushed when he got the obvious answer? Most of all, why ask at all when he clearly had what it takes, rushing in to save a friend, body and powers moving on their own to save someone?

All Might was by no means stupid but he wasn't keen on trying to solve a puzzle with only half the pieces. He knew who had the rest of the set, though. Young Midoriya would be getting a surprise visit from his favorite hero tomorrow and Yagi Toshinori was going to get his answers.

**Author's Note:**

> Critics are welcome. I'm knocking off 14 years of rust but I hope you all enjoyed. Can't say when the next chapter will be, only that it will be. This just happened to come out of my hands of it's own volition but there ain't no stopping now.


End file.
